As the Board of Education grapples with declining school enrollments and pressures to cut costs, perhaps by closing a school, Hawley School has been placed at the center of the discussion by recommendations that suggest that the Church Hill Road school may be the facility best suited for closure. Among the arguments being amassed to fight its closing is the historic nature of this school. It is interesting to note at this point that the school’s long history began in the middle of another polarizing conflict among the town’s residents.

Newtown Historical Society will host an open house at its headquarters, The Matthew Curtiss House, on Sunday June 14. This month’s living history demonstration will be presented by Thomas Kingsley, of Kingsley Marbles in Trumbull. In addition, Town Historian Dan Cruson will offer a walking tour of the town’s oldest cemetery.

The public is also invited to visit and tour the building at 44 Main Street any time between noon and 4 pm. Admission is free; however, a $2 suggested donation per person is welcomed and appreciated.

Unassembled new balcony theater seating sat waiting in an upper lobby at the Edmond Town Hall Wednesday, May 13. There for its delivery that morning was Board of Managers Chairman Jim Juliano, who noted the many parts that would require assembly. Moving those parts that will soon add up to 158 new seats for the balcony was building staff member Joe Collins, who will put them together.

Before it was a television channel, the word “nickelodeon” meant a performance that cost a nickel: juke box, player piano, and especially a movie theater. On Monday, January 12, at 7:30 pm, Town Historian Daniel Cruson will give his annual lecture, this year looking at “A Night At The Nickelodeon.”

The program will take place in the lower meeting room of C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street.

Every year, The Newtown Bee is privileged to share the stories of Newtown residents and organizations, and among the many highlighted in 2014, were these stories.

Newtown resident Paul L. Sirois was named executive director of Regional Hospice Foundation, as of January 1. A financial planner for 17 years, most recently vice president and financial advisor for Union Savings Bank, Mr Sirois previously served as chairman of the Regional Hospice board.

Newtown Historical Society will host its annual homes and gardens tour on Saturday, June 28. Then on Sunday, the society will host the final open house of the season at its headquarters, a program about ice cream combined with a celebration of the tenth anniversary of Ferris Acres Creamery, and a walking tour of Sandy Hook Center.

“Mainly Main Street” is the focus for Newtown Historical Society’s 2014 House & Garden Tour.

Since becoming pastor of the Newtown United Methodist Church (NUMC), six and a half years ago, the Reverend Mel Kawakami has overseen one of the rituals of spring there — filling in the sinkholes in the front parking lot. But until last year, when a 10-by-10-foot test hole was opened up and he had the opportunity to see what lay beneath the asphalt, Rev Kawakami and many of his congregation had no idea that the ongoing problem was a piece of history buried under their feet.

Nearly a century separates the lives of the man recognized as Newtown’s first historian, Ezra Levan Johnson, and Newtown’s first official historian, Daniel Cruson, but uncanny similarities between the two men make them brethren.